Telegram - The 'App Of Choice' For Jihadists: ISIS Seizes On Internet Tool To Promote Terror

The 'App Of Choice' For Jihadists: ISIS Seizes On Internet Tool To Promote Terror

When the Islamic State was seeking
volunteers for a holiday killing spree in Europe, it sent word over its
favorite social-media channel: the messaging service known as Telegram.

"Christmas,
Hanukkah, and New Years Day is very soon," began a Dec. 6 posting on
one of the terrorist group's usual Telegram bulletin boards. "So let's
prepare a gift for the filthy pigs/apes."

Two weeks later, when a
truck mowed down pedestrians at a crowded Berlin Christmas market, the
group again used Telegram, this time to claim credit for the attack. On
Friday, after chief suspect Anis Amri was killed in a Milan shootout,
Telegram broadcast his posthumous video. The Tunisian migrant had fled
Berlin and crisscrossed France and Italy before being stopped by Italian
police looking for a burglary suspect. In his video he pledges
allegiance to the Islamic State and issues a chilling warning to
Westerners: "God willing, we will slaughter you."The words and images flew across the globe over a network that terrorist
leaders describe as ideal for their purposes: one that is highly
discreet, with its heavy encryption and secret chat rooms, but also
highly permissive, allowing violent jihadist groups to exchange ideas
and spread propaganda with minimal interference. The same conclusion has
been reached by terrorism analysts who say Telegram is now
overwhelmingly preferred by extremist groups such as the Islamic State,
in part because the company has failed to adopt the aggressive measures
used by its competitors to kick terrorists off its channels.

A
report this week by an organization that monitors jihadists' Internet
communications calls Telegram "the app of choice for many ISIS, pro-ISIS
and other jihadi and terrorist elements." The study describes the
terrorists' mass migration to Telegram as one of the most striking
developments in the field recently. ISIS is one of the common acronyms
for the Islamic State.

"It has surpassed Twitter as the most
important platform," said Steven Stalinsky, lead author of the report by
the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, also known
as MEMRI. "All the big groups are on it. We see ISIS talking about the
benefits of Telegram and encouraging its followers to use it."

Terrorists'
use of Telegram has been a growing concern among U.S. and European
counterterrorism officials for more than a year, as well as a source of
numerous inquiries and complaints lodged against the German-based
company and its creator, Pavel Durov, a 32-year-old Russian national who
launched the service in 2013 with his brother, Nikolai.

Just
three days before the assault on the Berlin Christmas market, senior
members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee urged Pavel Durov to
immediately take steps to block content from the Islamic State, warning
that terrorists were using the platform not only to spread propaganda,
but also to coordinate actual terrorist attacks.

"No private
company should allow its services to be used to promote terrorism and
plan out attacks that spill innocent blood," stated the letter, signed
by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, the chairman of the panel's subcommittee on
terrorism and nonproliferation, and Rep. Brad Sherman, Calif., the
ranking Democrat of the subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

Efforts this week to reach Telegram's founder through his social-media accounts were unsuccessful.

Pavel
Durov, who fled Russia in 2014 and now lives in a kind of self-imposed
exile as a citizen of the island state of Saint Kitts and Nevis, has
defended his company's efforts at self-policing in past interviews and
essays, noting that Telegram shut down 78 channels used by the Islamic
State in the wake of the Nov. 13, 2015, terrorist attack in Paris. In
March, Durov told CBS's "60 Minutes" that he was "horrified" to see
terrorist groups infesting Telegram's chat rooms, and he said the
company was trying to do more to stop them.

But Durov also
contends that it is impossible to fully prevent terrorists from taking
advantage of the encrypted communication services Telegram offers to its
100 million active users, a global network that includes millions of
people living in countries that deny citizens the right to free
expression.

"There's little you can do, because if you allow this
tool to be used for good, there will always be some people who would
misuse it," Durov told CBS.

But critics of the company - a cohort
that includes high-ranking U.S. counterterrorism officials - say
Telegram could do more. A primary reason for the German firm's
popularity with violent groups is the fact that rival social-media
companies have aggressively cracked down on them, U.S. officials say.
Facebook and Twitter - two firms that were once criticized for allowing
terrorist postings on their pages - have received high marks in recent
months for their efforts to find and block jihadist content as soon as
the material surfaces.

"Positive steps by Twitter, for example,
are part of the reason Telegram is becoming the new thing," said a
senior administration official involved in tracking the Islamic State's
online presence. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
to discuss sensitive analysis of the terrorist group's operations,
called the migration to Telegram a "major cause of concern," in part
because of encryption features that make it harder for law enforcement
officials to discover and thwart the terrorists' plans.

"It's
alarming because it shows they're really good at adapting to new means,"
the official said. To stop attacks, private companies and government
officials must stay a step ahead of the terrorists and "figure out how
to deny them these capabilities before they even start using them," he
said, adding: "That simply hasn't been the case with Telegram."

Indeed,
new user-friendly features installed by Telegram have made the task of
preempting terrorism even harder, government officials and private
experts say.

Originally a phone-based software with a relatively
small but devoted following, Telegram last year introduced a new version
for desktop computers that made it easier to transmit videos and large
files as well as private messages.

New "end-to-end" encryption
was added in April to give users an extra assurance of privacy.
Independent analysts have described the quality of Telegram's encryption
as "military grade," meaning that it is extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to crack. Users can also opt for a self-destruct feature in
which private messages disappear as soon as they are read.

MEMRI's
Stalinsky, the co-author of the new report on Telegram, monitors
hundreds of jihadist-related Telegram channels from a bank of computers
at his office, watching live "chats" by individuals who sign on to
forums linked to the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and dozens of other groups.
Often, he says, a participant in one of the open discussions will
signal that he wants to have a private conversation. That typically
means joining a temporary "secret," invitation-only chat group that will
exist for only a few hours and then disappear.

"If you're not watching at that precise moment, you'd never know about it," Stalinsky said.

Even
the more-public conversations often convey specific instructions about
bomb-making or potential targets for terrorist attacks. In recent months
Islamic State leaders and supporters have posted messages on Telegram
containing lengthy "kill lists" of Westerners the terrorists sought to
mark for execution, as well as appeals to sympathetic scientists and
engineers to join the Islamic State's efforts to help with producing
advanced weapons.

Last month, Stalinsky, using an anonymous user
name, gained entrance to a secret Telegram chat in which self-described
British and American supporters of the Islamic State discussed ideas for
attacking the U.S. Embassy in London.

Stalinsky alerted U.S.
officials to the conversation, and there is no known evidence suggesting
that the would-be terrorists put their plan into motion. But screen
shots of the text exchange show the participants discussing in detail
the logistics for such an attack, from weapons to travel arrangements.
The individuals even discuss whether they should take steps to avoid
killing women and children.

"We are soldiers of Allah," one of
the participants wrote in arguing for sparing the lives of innocents.
"Kuffar [infidels] are filthy dogs with no morals."

The fact that
the group allowed a complete stranger to monitor the chat suggests that
the plotters were not true Islamic State operatives. Indeed, while
Telegram's users include senior terrorist leaders and operatives, many
chatroom inhabitants appear to be merely fanboys and wannabes, and some
clearly "are not that smart," Stalinsky said.

Yet, even bumblers
are capable of striking a blow for the Islamic State. And using
Telegram, Stalinsky said, the naive and willing have opportunities to
connect with professionals who are experts both at the tools of
terrorism and the use of social media to put deadly plans into action.

"The
West has been generally two steps behind the jihadis when it comes to
cyber," Stalinsky said. "Many people in government are still focused on
Twitter, and they need to be. But what we tell them is, 'that's no
longer the main story.' "